These arrangements were indeed admirable, all of them, but they should have been earlier enforced. Not that Sir Richard Bourke was to blame for this. The change he instituted should have been made by his predecessors. But he was probably superior as an administrator to most who had gone before. At least he was clear-sighted enough to perceive that New South Wales had already outgrown the conditions of a mere penal settlement. He was of opinion that convict labour was no longer required, and that the abolition of transportation would be really a benefit to the colonial community. He was in this ahead of his time, but within a year or two of the close of his reign the same views began to be widely entertained both in Great Britain and her colonies. In fact, the period was now approaching when the idea of the possible abandonment of transportation was to take a tangible and substantial form.
CHAPTER III CONVICT LIFE
Various conditions described—Arrival and treatment of newcomers—Hyde Park barracks for males—Parramatta factory for females—Behaviour of assignees to their convict servants—Treatment at out-stations—Labour—How enforced—Demeanour of convicts—Disciplinary methods—The lash the chief penalty.
British transportation divides itself naturally into three periods. The first comprises the early history of the penal colonies; the second treats of the days when "assignment" flourished, then fell into disrepute; the third saw the substitution of the "probation" system, its collapse; and finally, the abandonment of transportation beyond the seas. Transportation was really continued for some years after the collapse of the probation system in Van Diemen's Land, but only to the extent of sending a few hundreds annually to Western Australia, and in keeping up the convict establishments at Bermuda and Gibraltar. Having sketched this early history in the two preceding chapters, I propose to draw now a picture of convict life, and the state of the colonies generally during the second of these periods. I shall, in this, confine myself chiefly to New South Wales, the details of management and the results having been much the same in Van Diemen's Land, or Tasmania as it is now called. But I shall refer more especially to that island in a later page.
To the voyage out and the internal management of convict ships I intend to devote a special chapter. Let us imagine that the anchor is dropped in Sydney harbour, and that the surgeon superintendent has gone on shore to make his bow to His Excellency the Governor of New South Wales and its dependencies. There is already plenty of excitement in the town. The ship had been signalled in the offing, and there are numbers of good people on the look out for useful hands from among its cargo. The days when convict labour was a drug in the market are past and gone; the rush for "assigned" servants is now so great that requisitions far in excess of the number available crowd the office of the assignment board. All sorts of tricks have been put in practice to get early information as to the qualifications of those on board: although the indent bearing the names of the new convicts goes first to the governor and then to the assignment officers, the cunning old stagers—not a few of them themselves emancipists—have found out privately from the surgeon or the master of the vessel whether there are upon the list any men likely to be useful to them. Thus a watchmaker seeks to obtain a watchmaker; an engraver, an engraver; printers, compositors; merchants want clerks, as doctors do assistants, or as the genteel folk—"ancients" they love to style themselves—do cooks, butlers, and ladies'-maids. Many got convicts assigned to them who were distinctly unfit and unworthy of the charge. Cases were indeed known of settlers, outwardly honest men, whose only object in asking for servants was to get assistants in thieving, cattle stealing, and other nefarious transactions. All who lived inland came off second best in the general rush: unless they had some friend on the spot to watch their interests they had to take their chance later on. But these too are in want of skilled labourers: one requires a carpenter to complete a new shed or roof to his house; another a blacksmith for the farm forge; and all would be glad of men with any agricultural training or skill. If the newly-arrived ship carries female convicts, there is similar anxiety. At one time governesses were frequently got from among these outcasts; but the practice of confiding the education of innocent children to such teachers appeared so monstrous that it was soon altogether discontinued. But nursemaids and other household servants were in eager request, and it must be confessed that the moral condition of the colony was such that many of the better looking female convicts were obtained without disguise for distinctly immoral purposes.
One and all were compelled to lodge their applications for assigned servants with the assignment board, where practically the decision rested. This board was governed latterly by the clear and explicit rules laid down by Sir Richard Bourke, to which I have referred in the last chapter, but before these regulations were framed many malcontents among the settlers were ready to declare that assignment all depended upon favour and affection. "If you had no friend on the board," says one, "you might get a chimney-sweep when you wanted a cabinetmaker." In the same way complaints were made that the members of this board, and other officials in high place, were given as many assigned servants as they asked for. Thus the Chief Justice of the colony had forty, the Colonial Secretary fifty or sixty, the Brigade Major eight or ten. The principal landowners, too, were liberally supplied. One, a salt manufacturer, had sixty or seventy; another, with a farm of forty thousand acres, employed a couple of hundred servants. Laing declares that the assignment of useful hands depended often on petty services rendered to government, and that many of the settlers succeeded in getting on the weak side of the governor and his advisers.
But to return to the ship, which meanwhile lay out in the stream. No one was allowed to communicate with her, except the Colonial Secretary or his assistant. One of these officials having gone on board to muster all hands, inspect them, and investigate any complaints, as soon as these preliminaries were concluded the disembarkation took place at the dockyard. Male convicts were at once marched to the Hyde Park barracks, where they paraded for the inspection of His Excellency the governor. Then the assignees, having been first informed of the numbers they were to receive, waited in person or sent for them, paying on receipt one pound per head for bedding and the convict clothes. Assignees failing to appear, or to remove the lots assigned to them, forfeited the grant. With the women the system was much the same. They were first mustered, then they landed, decked out in their finest feathers. There was no attempt to enforce a plain uniformity of attire; each woman wore silks and satins if she had them, with gay bonnets, bright ribbons, and showy parasols. Persons who had applied for female servants were present at the dockyard to receive them. After that all who remained on government charge—and their numbers were large, for female convicts were not in great demand—passed on next to the great central depot or factory at Parramatta.
As the Hyde Park barracks and the Parramatta factory were to a certain extent depot prisons for males and females respectively, a word about both will not be out of place here.